Generosity

P. Gorazd Cetkovský, O.Carm.

At first glance, it does not seem that generosity belongs to the topics within the realm of spiritual life. But gradually, I have come to the conviction: yes, this form should be the outcome of the gospel's influence in our lives. Because I have believed in Jesus, who is the Savior and the Son of God, and I have entrusted my life to Him, it should lead me (in the same way, though gradually) to generosity. In other words: Jesus makes everyone a generous person... or at least makes us more generous than we would be without Him, without Christ.

At first, I noticed that I was not very generous. The story "Crime in the Cottage" by Karel Čapek keeps coming to my mind. The farmer Vondráček killed his father-in-law because he wanted to sell a field that, according to Vondráček's belief, should instead be joined to the neighboring field: "Those fields want to be together. That already takes feeling!" And this feeling for the land and Vondráček's farming blinded him so much that to prevent the sale of the field, he killed his father-in-law. And even during the court proceedings, he could not be persuaded to feel guilty.

I don't know if you ever experience some such fixed belief and compulsive behavior. In Vondráček's case, it took a drastic form. But in a milder form, I think many of us know it. For example, as perfectionism, which drives us to complete tasks with a meticulousness that is unreasonable. And similarly.
It is a confusion in the order of values. We take something insignificant too seriously. That is, after all, the opposite of generosity...

What does the name itself tell us about generosity?

It is evidently a compound word. In my opinion, this suggests that it is a relatively young concept, as our languages do not have a native word for it (like water, day, fear).
This is also the case in other languages. The Czech word generosity most likely stems from the German word Großzügigkeit.
Cognates in Latin are the adjective magnanimus, which literally means: one of great spirit, and in Italian: magnanimità and longanimità - forbearance, generosity.

Related words in Czech, as noted by the dictionary¹, include:

• generous - approaching the resolution of a matter from a broad perspective with regard to the essence of the matter and disregarding subordinate circumstances; indicative of such an approach: generous plan, program, task; generous construction, generous help; generous enterprise, generous person (opposite: narrow-minded);
• magnanimous - generous, noble, noble-hearted (opposite: mean-spirited): generous deed, generous nation (Ner.), generous promise (Arb.);
• great-souled - less frequently occurring;
• liberal - 1. characterized by mental greatness, nobility, (…) generous, magnanimous; 2. proud, haughty, lofty-minded.

Words with the opposite meaning include:

• narrow-minded - derogatory having a small outlook, suffering from prejudices, limited: a narrow-minded petty bourgeois;²
• petty - 1. clinging to trivialities, trifles, dealing with them, pertaining to them: people become petty as they age; a petty critic; petty actions; petty interests, worries; 2. insignificant, trivial: a petty excuse; to be able to forget petty things.

And we could also think about what gestures and idioms relate to generosity. A generous person can wave their hand over less significant matters. They will not engage in petty wars, nor make a mountain out of a molehill.³ They can conclude that some unpleasantness is just a storm in a teacup. And they do not find themselves in a situation where they can't see the wood for the trees. And so on.

How to define generosity?

It will certainly be useful to clarify what I mean by this word. In my opinion, it includes:

1. The ability to distinguish important things from unimportant ones.
2. The ability to let go of unimportant things.
3. The ability to be enthusiastic about significant things! (Generosity is not indifference.)
4. The ability to spontaneously, heartily give, that is, generosity. Including giving forgiveness. And at the same time, to have a healthy regard for oneself. (Generosity is not disorder.)

Can we find generosity in the Bible?

The word generosity is not found in the Bible. But in essence, the Holy Scripture is a great textbook of generosity! An Italian loosely structured biblical concordance⁴ includes the entry magnanimity with corresponding references:

• Dt 24:19-22: the remainder of the harvest is to belong to the homeless, the orphan, and the widow.
• 1 Sam 24: David spared Saul's life in the cave of Ein Gedi.
• 1 Sam 30:23ff: David established that the spoil was to be shared among all the fighters.
• Prov 19:11: forgiving offenses (in Italian: insults) is a man's glory.
• Mat 5,40: "to him, give your cloak also..."
• Lk 6:27-30: "love your enemies, (…) pray for those who mistreat you."
• 1 Tim 1:16: "Jesus Christ displayed all his generosity on me first."
• 2 Tim 3:10: but you have closely followed my teaching (…) "patience…"
• 2 Tim 4:2: "encourage with all patience."
• 1 Pet 3:20: God's forbearance waited during the days of Noah, while the ark was being built.
• 2 Pet 3:15: consider the patience of our Lord as salvation.

So we see that it involves: generosity, willingness to forgive, patience. Similarly, in this book, we also find the entry longanimity with references to various places in the Bible. From these, it is evident that it also pertains to patience, mercy, forgiveness.

Testimonies from the Gospels

I will stick to the definition of generosity that I provided and will add quotations from Scripture.

(1) The ability to distinguish important from unimportant things

• Mat 23:23ff: The Lord Jesus rejects formality. And says to the Pharisees who gave tithes of mint, dill, and cumin, but neglected justice and mercy: "These you ought to have done, and not left the others undone. Blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel." And freeing the bent woman, who had been "possessed by a spirit of infirmity" for eighteen years, is certainly more important than keeping the Sabbath rest (Lk 13:10-17).
• Mat 24:42ff contains a warning to be watchful. Our earthly life will come to an end and the Lord will demand accounts from us. However, the bad servant is pettishly intoxicated with the present moment and what is offered in it, so he puts off the thought of the future and the associated responsibility. He thinks to himself: "My master is not coming anytime soon…”
• In several parables, Jesus urges patience. Generosity here means not letting oneself be "imprisoned" in the present moment (in momentary unfulfillment, failure, pain, injustice, etc.), but counting on the future in which God will take care of us, and being able to wait. This is encouraged by the parables of the sown seed (it grows for the farmer in the field, "he doesn’t even know how": Mk 4:26-29), of the mustard seed (Mk 4:30-32), the command not to uproot the tares but to wait until the harvest (Mat 13:24-30). When a woman gives birth, she suffers, but when she has birthed the child, she forgets the anguish and rejoices (John 16:21). The metaphor that a tree is known by its fruit (Mat 7:16-19) offers very valuable advice for discernment, but sometimes it is necessary to wait until the fruit reveals itself.

(2) The ability to derive a practical consequence: to let go of unimportant things, and to do it promptly

• This letting go is emphasized in the parables of calling:
• The merchant sells everything he has for the pearl (Mat 13:45-46); the same goes for the parable of the treasure found in the field (Mat 13:44).
• We should not ascribe excessive importance to transitory things, as the rich man foolishly did, who depended only on the supplies in his barns and did not care to be "rich towards God" (Lk 12:16-21).
• The dishonest steward, in securing his future, sacrificed part of his master's property and the remainder of his honesty (Lk 16:1-8).
• If something completely distracts us from the path leading to the Kingdom of God, the Lord Jesus calls for radical uncompromisingness with exaggerated and striking images: If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off; if your foot causes you to sin, cut it off; if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out… (Mat 18:8-9).
• The promptness is logically (not literally) contained in the parables of the pearl and the treasure. We hear explicitly about it during the calling of the apostles: "Immediately they left their nets and followed him" (Mat 4:20; similarly elsewhere).

(3) The ability to be enthusiastic about significant things, that is, about the invitation to the Kingdom of God

• The Lord Jesus compares his contemporaries, who were not good enough for the strict John the Baptist nor the merciful Jesus, thus distancing themselves from both, to children in the marketplace who only act picky, but there is no game with them (Mat 11:16-19).
• In the parable of the great banquet (Lk 14:15-24), which is a parable of calling, it is embarrassing that the invited prefer to tour a purchased field and test their new oxen, even though they already have both; they wouldn't miss out! Thus, they reject the invitation.

(4) The willingness to heartily give, to share, to grant forgiveness - generosity

The reason for this attitude is that God behaves this way towards us!

• We must forgive one another, because God has forgiven each of us much more. In the parable of the unmerciful servant, his master says: "Wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you begged me. Should you not also have had compassion on your fellow servant, as I had pity on you?" (Mat 18:32-33.)
• We must love even our enemies, i.e., be willing to help them when they are in distress, and pray for those who persecute us, for God makes his sun to rise on the evil and the good (Mat 5:45) and is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked (Lk 6:35-36).

Examples from the lives of saints

When the Roman rogues wondered why Saint Philip Neri did not make his life easier or more pleasant with some mischief, he replied to them: “I prefer heaven!” (It is understood: to get there - in comparison to what I would gain now through sin…)

Saint John Maria Vianney said:⁵ “Some people are deeply absorbed in prayer like a fish is in water, because they are entirely devoted to God. In their hearts, there is no division. How I love such generous souls!”

Looking at the beauty of the Swiss mountains and lakes, the young Teresa felt God's greatness and realized that even a religious life need not be necessarily lived generously.

“I realized how easily one can become centered on oneself and forget the noble goal of one's calling; and I said to myself: Later, in the hour of trial, when I am imprisoned in Carmel and can only look at a little corner of the starry sky, I will remember what I see today. This thought will give me courage. And thanks to the view of God's greatness and power, I will easily forget my pitiable little interests, for I want to love only Him. May I not encounter the misfortune of clinging to straw [that is, to trivialities] now, when 'my HEART HAS ALREADY FELT,⁷ what Jesus prepares for those who love Him.”⁶ (AS 122-123.)

And in a letter to her aunt, Saint Teresa (LT 178) wrote: Now I have nothing to envy, because I can look closely at the deeds of the Saints, see their struggles, and the generosity with which they submit to God's will.⁸ Uncle Guérin, whom Teresa considered a saint, pleased her by being generous! And this generosity is part of sanctity.

What else is related to generosity

Our prayer should significantly support our generosity: we again and again thank God for the great things He has done for us. Therefore, in adversities we can ask ourselves: Who can separate us from the love of Christ?... (Rom 8:35.) And likewise, we should again and again recall in prayer our Christian hope that the sufferings of this time are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed… (Rom 8:18.)

Our asceticism is not some sweaty self-torment but rather an effort to maintain true freedom for important things. Poverty in worldly matters represents the capacity for true wealth through faith!

Generosity also includes humor (not taking unimportant things or oneself too seriously). Isn’t the essence of a joke to highlight limitations of someone's reasoning (with good logic!) or our own view of reality – and to laugh about it? For example, my favorite joke about the altar boy:
The pastor is calmly lingering at the rectory, and suddenly he is disturbed by a terrible scream from outside. He looks out the window and sees the altar boy firmly holding a cat by the tail and spinning it above his head. That is why the cat is emitting horrible cries. The priest runs downstairs, grabs the boy, and shakes him until he quickly releases the cat in fright. The pastor sternly reprimands him: "You shouldn’t torment an animal!... You might have torn its tail off! As a punishment, tell me, against which of the Ten Commandments you have sinned!" The culprit thinks for a moment and then timidly replies: "What God has joined together, let not man separate..." – The boy's answer to the priest contains logic, but only limited logic. And that makes it humorous.

Generosity is important in spreading the gospel: not clinging to forms, to one's personal approach, to unimportant details, but passing on the essence.

Generosity means obedience to God's will. This lesson I take from Čapek's story Crime in the Cottage. Vondráček was disobedient to God's will, to God's order of creation. His regard for the "will of the fields" (what the fields want) is excessive and ultimately even murderous. Similarly, we cling to different things, for instance (when I again mention perfectionism) to the perfection of what we do. But God may want something different than we imagine! He may want something that, according to our assessment, is half-hearted and inconsistent!

Supplement on depicting the cross

Several years ago, I was greatly intrigued by Professor Jungmann's explanation that in the transition from the eleventh to the twelfth century, there was a significant change in central thought, which also concerned the understanding of faith.
A vivid expression of this transformation in the view of Christ is how Christ was depicted. In antiquity, Christ was portrayed as the resurrected Pantocrator – Ruler of the Universe. And crosses were painted without a corpus – as a sign that will appear in the sky at the end of times at Christ's second coming (Mat 24:30); thus the cross was a symbol of future events!

In the later Middle Ages, Christ began to be depicted as the Child in the manger and as the Crucified. By then, crosses bore a corpus, as they showed how much Jesus suffered for us on the cross. The cross became a reminder of past events.

When we become aware of both and connect them, it also relates to generosity. We believe that Jesus has already triumphed over evil, satan, and death. The enemy is still fighting, but he is already defeated. We participate in Christ's victory: we have already been redeemed, sanctified by the Spirit, we are already free children of God and heirs of God's kingdom. And we are moving toward the fullness of salvation. Then Jesus will come "just as" truly as the apostles saw him leave (Acts 1:11). On this foundation, our generosity is built.

If you wish, you can derive a practical prompt from this entire consideration: let us reflect on where we are petty, narrow-minded, fearful. What are my trivialities, my "two stripes of field" that at all costs "want to be together; this already takes feeling!" and which make us behave foolishly or even harm others. Let us ask our Master and Lord for a healthy Christian generosity.